Modder TrashBench glued a desktop water cooler to an old GTX 1060 laptop, kept both chips under 40°C at full load and squeezed out up to 14% more speed.
YouTube modder TrashBench attached a 360mm desktop water-cooling radiator to an old Metabox gaming laptop with a GTX 1060 and Core i7-8750H. Waterblocks, a stronger pump, 3D-printed mounts and epoxy hold it all together, with a manual switch to turn the cooling on.
The result: temperatures about 60°C lower than stock, with both chips staying under 40°C at full load. Gaming gains were small until he overclocked. Then Forza Horizon 5 rose from 75 to 83 FPS, and performance improved by 14% on average.
It's a fun proof of how much heat holds laptops back, not a project to copy.
Gaming laptops run hot. One modder decided the fix was a radiator built for desktop PCs, glued to the back of the screen. YouTuber TrashBench strapped a 360mm water-cooling radiator to an old Metabox gaming laptop, and both the processor and graphics chip dropped by about 60°C under load.
It’s a wild build, but it shows something every laptop owner deals with: heat holds performance back. When a laptop’s chips get too hot, they slow themselves down to stay safe, a process called thermal throttling. This laptop 360mm cooling mod is an extreme demonstration of how much speed is left on the table, and it’s a good excuse to look at the simpler ways to keep your own machine cooler.
TrashBench is known for over-the-top PC modifications built around water cooling. This time he took a Metabox P950EP, a laptop from an Australian brand that rebadges machines from the Taiwanese maker Clevo. It packs an Intel Core i7-8750H processor and an Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics chip, aging but still capable parts. The plan was to turn it into a machine his daughter could play Fortnite on.
The heart of the mod is a cut-up 360mm all-in-one (AIO) cooler left over from another project. An AIO is a sealed water-cooling kit normally used in desktop PCs: a pump pushes liquid through a block sitting on the chip, then through a radiator where fans blow the heat away.
The first plan was to reuse the AIO’s own pump and add a second block for the CPU. Testing showed that pump wasn’t strong enough to push liquid through two blocks, so TrashBench switched to a separate, more powerful pump. That in turn meant adding another waterblock, because a standalone pump doesn’t come built into a block the way an AIO’s does.
3D-printed holders press the waterblocks onto the chips, screwed into the same holes the laptop’s original heat pipes and blower fan used. More printed mounts hold the radiator behind the screen. There wasn’t room to screw those in, so he reluctantly used two-part epoxy glue.
The memory and the VRMs, the small components that feed power to the processor, got heatsinks as well. Thermal pads raised the memory chips to the same height as the VRMs so one heatsink could cover each group, and a dab of epoxy holds them in place for good. Clear flexible tubes with screw clamps link the blocks, pump and radiator.
Power took some creativity. The laptop runs on 19V, while the pump and fans need 12V, so TrashBench soldered a step-down converter to the contacts that once fed the stock blower fan.
That created a new problem: the cooling switched on whenever the laptop did, with no way to run it only under load. His fix was a manual toggle switch on a 3D-printed plate, screwed onto the bottom of the case, which now has a large hole cut in it to fit the pump and blocks. A printed riser underneath lets the whole contraption stand up.
During the leak test, he declared everything fine just as a few air bubbles drifted through the tubes, a reminder that DIY liquid cooling always carries some risk.
The numbers are striking. Temperatures averaged about 60°C below stock, and the CPU and GPU stayed well under 40°C even at full load.
Gaming gains were modest at first. Forza Horizon 5 went from 75 FPS to 77. But with so much thermal headroom, TrashBench overclocked the chips, pushing them to run faster than their default settings. That lifted Forza to 83 FPS, and across games and benchmarks the overclocked machine averaged 14% better performance.
The lesson is that a cool chip isn’t automatically a fast one. The big wins only came once the extra cooling was used to raise the speed limits.
Please don’t glue a radiator to your laptop. This mod involves cutting the case, permanent epoxy and liquid near electronics, and it will almost certainly void any warranty. If your laptop runs hot, these easier steps can help:
If your laptop lets you stop charging at 80 percent, turn that on as well, since constant charging adds heat.
Yes, but only with heavy custom work like this build: waterblocks, a pump, a radiator, extra power wiring and a cut-open case. It isn’t practical for most people.
Temperatures fell by about 60°C on average, and after overclocking the laptop ran an average of 14% faster in games and benchmarks.
Clear and clean the vents, use a stand or cooling pad, lower the maximum processor state and keep the room cool.
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